Human capital policy and new European Social Fund Programme

Abstract

The article afford the issue of human resources in Italy and the contribution that its development might have to a sustainable recovery of the Italian economy. With the start of the new seven-year program of the European Social Fund (ESF), there is a concrete opportunity of consistent financial resources that could be used for strengthening and futher development of knowledge, competencies and skills of the Italian population. The argument proposed by the article is the necessity to pursue the use of the ESF in systematic and concentrated way, avoiding dispersion in small project and/or in policy issues that should be financed by the ordinary national public resources. This implies the need to revise the value chain of the various components of a policy active job, in particular as regards the training cycle. In practical terms it means, on the basis of a network approach, to take care of all the different phases the cycle, starting from the analysis of the needs to orientation, training and job placement.